“There was a full moon in the starless sky. I thought how rarely I had noticed such things. Some deep failure of the soul perhaps. An inherited emptiness. A nothingness passed from generation to generation. A flaw in the psyche, discovered only by those who suffer by it.”
―
Josephine Hart,
Damage

“They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.”
―
Josephine Hart,
Damage

“I take thisfor myself, and you take up the thread of my life between your teeth,tin thread and tarnished with abuse,you shall still hearas long as the beast in me maintainsits taciturn power to close my lidsin tears, and my loins move yetin the ennobling pursuit of all the worldsyou have left me alone in, and would bethe dolorous distraction from,while you summon your army of anguisheswhich is a million hooting blood vesselson the eyes and in the earsat that instant before death.”
―
Frank O'Hara,
Meditations in an Emergency